


Scars

by rangerhitomi



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 11:09:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3408329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rangerhitomi/pseuds/rangerhitomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryoga is self-conscious about his scars... some more than others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scars

It’s hot, and entirely too much so, which is why Yuma wants to go to the beach. And normally Ryoga likes the beach because he likes to bury his constantly aching limbs in the hot sand – his neck is sore, and he’s ninety percent sure it’s because of the night before, when Yuma conned him into hammock sleeping for the first time (the weather was nice for it but no back support sucked) – but Ryoga isn’t particularly up for it today. He’s been having too many  _dreams_  lately, and looking at his body only reminded him forcibly of all the shit he’d been put through in his long, long, long life. Well,  _lives_ , multiple.

Twenty minutes of Yuma hanging on him, whining –  _Shaaaark, come oooonnnn, pleeeease go swimming with meeee_  – and Ryoga finds himself at the beach anyway. 

He pointedly looks away when Yuma strips down to his swimming shorts right there in the middle of the beach ( _does he have to do that?_ ) and he’s staring at Ryoga, who has set up an umbrella and is settling down with a book.

“Aren’t you gonna swim with me?” Yuma’s face is full of rejection and Ryoga still can’t look at it.

“I forgot my swimming stuff,” Ryoga says, flipping his book open, and it’s mostly the truth. Well, he didn’t  _forget_ it, per se, but Yuma doesn’t have to know that.

Far from being sad or disgruntled, Yuma grins and holds up a bag. “Got you covered. Your sis said you probably would forget it so she gave this to me. C’mon, get changed and let’s go!”

He makes a mental note to replace Rio’s toothpaste with Icy Hot and grits his teeth. “I burn easily.”

Yuma holds up the sunscreen. “I have some of this stuff I can help you put on.”

Just the thought of Yuma’s hands touching his skin – slathering lotion on his back – makes Ryoga’s chest clench. Not in a bad way, not necessarily, but… Well, he just doesn’t want to think about his stupid teenage hormones at the moment. “I’m scared of sharks.”

Yuma rolls his eyes so hard Ryoga could almost hear them moving. “Shark, you run a  _shark_  deck.”

“Lots of nice support cards,” Ryoga says lamely, because it’s kind of bullshit and he knows it, but Yuma won’t know any different because he can’t even pronounce the word  _tactics_  and therefore doesn’t know anything about the shark archetype, probably.

“So you’re telling me you named yourself after a creature you’re scared of. That doesn’t make sense, Shark.”

“Did you know that Batman was scared of bats.”

“You also used to be the king of an island kingdom,” Yuma goes on without acknowledging Ryoga’s explanation. “You’re telling me you were scared of them back then too?”

This makes Ryoga shift uncomfortably.

“Anyway,” Yuma continues, waving a hand, “you should at least take your shirt off.”

Ryoga makes an indignant choking sound.

“You’re probably getting hot in all that polyester.”

“I’m not hot and it- wait, it’s not polyester, Yuma. We’ve been over this.” Sweat drips uncomfortably down his back into his underwear. Okay, so maybe he  _is_  hot. And maybe Yuma knows he’s full of shit. And maybe the shirt has a little bit of polyester in it but it’s still mostly cotton, damn it.

So Yuma helps him out of it. Which means that Ryoga makes more indignant choking sounds and tries in vain to push Yuma off, and Yuma still succeeds in pulling the shirt over Ryoga’s head anyway.

“Wow,” Yuma says after a moment of staring at Ryoga’s torso, and Ryoga’s pretty sure Yuma’s not just impressed by his toned abs.

Ryoga attempts to cover his body with his arms but it’s not like it matters anyway because there are too many scars to cover up, and Yuma’s eyes are firmly fixed on a particularly jagged one across his side.

_So much for that,_  he thinks with a scowl, and he’s flustered because Yuma is sitting  _on his lap_. “Yuma, get me off.”

There’s a short pause while the dawning realization of what he has just said washes over him, and he opens his mouth in horror but God bless the younger boy, he just looks a little confused.

“Did you mean  _get off me_?” Yuma suggests innocently.

Ryoga nods joltingly and Yuma slides off his lap. Goddamn everything, Yuma’s face isn’t even pink. Ryoga’s pretty sure his face is red enough to pass off as a sunburn if only he weren’t under this damn umbrella. Fortunately, Yuma is fixated on Ryoga’s scar. Or his scars, multiple, because Ryoga has quite a collection of them.

“Where did you get this?” Yuma asks, pointing at the jagged one.

“Heartland’s robots,” Ryoga says through gritted teeth. He doesn’t like to think about that, partly because after everything he’d been through in his life, he almost got done in by a malfunctioning robot trashcan. How embarrassing.

“Mm.” Yuma traces a finger over it for a moment and Ryoga’s stomach involuntarily shudders. “This one?” He points at one on Ryoga’s forearm.

Ryoga stares at it for a second. “When I took that falling rock for you.”

“I was wearing armor, Shark.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that at the time.”

There’s a tiny smile on Yuma’s face as he points to different scars in turn, and Ryoga answers with a degree of reluctance for each of them –  _when we fell down that cliff, when we went to Vector’s ruins and we ended up falling through that trap door, when… when…_

It gets harder to talk about them the more Yuma touches them, because they remind Ryoga of things he never wanted to remember but had to. He will never forget the scars from when he had scraped the ground after Durbe had saved him – unwillingly, unwittingly, because Durbe had no idea at the time that this boy he was saving was his best friend for two lifetimes – from being smashed by the falling rock wall. He will never forget the faint scars wrapping around his wrists from Don Thousand and Vector tying him up and forcing him to watch his sister and closest friend being murdered in front of him.

He will never forget the scar that came from the suit of armor that fell on nine year old Ryoga Kamishiro, even though it was a memory from before he ever  _was_  Ryoga Kamishiro. It’s a memory of a boy who is dead, a scar from a child that no longer exists.

Yuma’s hand rests gently between Ryoga’s shoulder blades, and the gesture calls up a memory about the scar there.

“I was once very skilled at riding horses,” he says, gazing across the cool water nearby. It looks inviting, and he is tempted now to go for a swim, and maybe more tempted to find a riptide somewhere that might drown him. “But even the best trained horse can get freaked out when someone shoots at it with an arrow. It reared, I fell back and a tree branch tore through the back of my shirt. I bled everywhere and Durbe…”

_Wait._

_That wasn’t this body. That wasn’t this life._

He closes his eyes and pulls his arms closer to his body again.

Yuma’s hand falls away and he leans over to look Ryoga in the eyes for a moment before looking away.

“Shark,” he whispers, taking Ryoga by the hand and loosely lacing their fingers together, “I was just touching your back. There is no scar right there.”

And as they sit under the umbrella on the hot, crowded beach, he is hit with the sudden realization that the thing that hurt the most about these scars isn’t the physical pain he had once endured, or the hideous marks they left behind on his skin, but the scarring memories attached to each of them. 


End file.
